Everyone forgets sometimes, but do you feel forgetting is beginning to interfere in your life?
Do you forget important events or information?
Do you think of yourself as forgetful? (Or have you been criticized for your forgetfulness)?
Are you becoming frustrated because of your forgetfulness?
The Berard method of AIT can help improve memory. In order to remember something, you must be attentive to the information so it can be processed quickly and be registered clearly in the brain. If you are not attending well, or are distracted easily, you will not be able to register and remember information in a well-organized way. Berard AIT improves attention and concentration, and balances important systems used for processing information, so that they function without conscious effort. As processing improves, it is easier to pay attention and concentrate, which in turn, allows you to store information correctly and easily, and quickly recall it when necessary.
According to Norman Doidge, author of The Brain That Changes Itself, “A major reason memory loss occurs as we age is that we have trouble registering new events in our nervous systems, because processing speed slows down, so that the accuracy, strength, and sharpness with which we perceive, declines. If you can’t register something clearly, you won’t be able to remember it well.”
Neuroscientist Michael Merzenich thinks the problems with word-finding occur because of the gradual neglect and atrophy of the brain’s attentional system and nucleus basalis, which have to be engaged for plastic change to occur. Neurons that represent speech pass on fuzzy signals to all the neurons downstream (“muddy in, muddy out”) so we have trouble remembering, finding, and using words.
Both Merzennich and Doidge speak of the need for attention as a precursor for memory. If we don’t pay attention to something, it won’t register in the brain. And we remember it better if it is processed quickly, and registers with clarity, etc. These basic principles also apply when you are younger, and your auditory processing system is transmitting indistinct signals that “muddy” the input.
